J. Herbin 1670 Anniversary Ink - Caroube de Chypre

The long awaited Caroube de Chypre, the brown 1670 ink from J. Herbin, has arrived! I had (and still have) a whole bunch of blog posts in the queue, some of which I had ideally wanted done before we leave on our trip but now may never happen given my organizational skills. I have awaiting this ink my whole life, an empty spot on my ink shelf of brown inks, just waiting to be filled with this beautiful bottle and its sparkles. In case you haven't noticed, I have a real thing for both brown inks and brown pens. It's not even a matchy-matchy issue, where I like my pens to have matching ink colours, I just like brown pens and brown inks. And a bit of sparkle. J. Herbin has been releasing their 1670 Anniversary Inks over the last few years, with Rouge Hematite and Bleu Ocean, and then Stormy Grey (my previous personal favourite, mainly because of how it writes, a good feeling in the nib and a nice opaque and dark grey with a hint of gold sparkle), and then last year Emeraude de Chivor. I thought I would share a few snaps of the new ink! I'm using Clairefontaine Triomphe paper with a Pilot Custom 92, medium nib, a wet writer. Things to keep in mind when writing with this ink is that wet writing nibs do the best if you're hoping to see a bit of that shine - not just broader or italic nibs. Some italic or stub nibs are quite wide, but if they are also dry, then the ink is spread thin and there won't be enough concentrated ink to show the sparkle. Broad and wet is always a good way to go with these 1670 inks, but if you have a fine or medium that is extremely wet, you still may get good results. Lucky for me, I like wet pens, so I naturally gravitate towards pens that will do well with all of these inks! Paper is another important factor - ink resistant papers do the best, like Tomoe River, Clairefontaine & Rhodia, Life Stationery. If your paper is too absorbent, the ink will soak in, rather than sitting on top. The ink itself is a reddish burgundy brown, with gold sparkles a bit of green sheen. This is actually with the same pen, but right at the beginning after I've just filled my pen, my feed is extra saturated from the dip into the bottle, and the sparkles are everywhere! It's may not be how the ink will look all the time after the extra ink on the feed has been evened out, but it's sure nice to look at. Here's a shot of my barrel after I've let the ink sit for a few minutes while taking photos of the writing samples. I generally don't like to shake my fountain pens too aggressively, because ink sometimes ends up in the cap. Because I carry my pens in my backpack or bag, and they got jostled around so I end up with a few droplets in my cap anyways, I don't want to add to it. However, if you've got these sparkly inks, sometimes the gold can settle, so it doesn't hurt to turn your pen upside down or roll it around to get all the gold reconstituted back into the ink. And just for fun, here are a few shots of drops of ink on the page - much, much more than would come out of a pen, but it's how you can really see all the gold. We sometimes get asked whether or not these 1670 inks are safe for fountain pens. While obviously these inks are made for fountain pens, the best answer is to use common sense! However, I can appreciate that that answer is a bit vague. I would say you should never do anything you're worried about, especially in an extremely valuable pen. I will also say that in my experience, it cleans out very well out of converters and barrels, flushes very cleanly without staining, except maybe the Rouge Hematite, although I always find a bit of gold glimmer left on my feeds even after quite a few flushes, which usually just add some glamour to the first few lines of the ink I put into my pen next. I haven't had or heard of any first hand clogging experiences, and actually I find that these 1670 inks write very well - maybe something in the formula to counteract anything to do with the added gold flakes. However, this may also be because people using these 1670 inks often exhibit some additional caution or common sense in flushing out their pens more regularly, especially if they're not going to use them for a while. I will admit to personally leaving Emeraude de Chivor in a Platinum 3776 music nib for a few months, and everything was fine, but I might not recommend it.

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In other news, we're keeping busy, and slowly starting to get ready for our trip. We've been undergoing a decluttering process basically for the last three years, and I have some yarn that I either need to do something with or donate, so I'm bringing it on the trip to crochet something out of it while we're on the train. I can only hope my fingers still remember what to do, or that there's internet access so I can watch a few instructional videos.

Jon has been making lists with things we need to do for the shop, buying safety equipment and visiting the bank, and I've been trying to mentally prepare Caleb (i.e. myself) to part from our animals. Despite being in excellent and loving hands, no one knows them like we do.

You have to rub Chicken's ears just right so he leans back and purrs with his whole body. You have to catch Super at just the right moment to catch him before he jumps up on the table to steal food. And you have to be able to tell the difference in Super's whining between needing to be taken out and needing to be let into the apartment because he suspects there's food on the table. And you also have to watch Chicken much more closely than Super because he is much more stealthy at climbing onto the table and calmly feasting on dinner scraps.

I think Caleb's really going to miss the both of them as well. Just yesterday we were walking around the aisles of Shopper's Drug Mart, and we walked through the pet aisle. He saw a picture of a cat on a bag of cat food, and he picked it up, and tried to put it in the basket. Caleb's one task in assisting with the care of our animals is feeding Chicken, which he does with great enthusiasm.

(I notice he didn't do this for the dog food, although it could be because Caleb's never seen us feeding the dog, since we feed Super after Caleb's gone to bed every night.)

In the morning, Jon usually gets up first, and it's me, Caleb, Chicken and Super all in bed. Sometimes Jon complains that there's no room for him, but I suspect he will also miss them, although he would never admit it out loud.